The Busy Bee of Abeille Masion Glamping Resort

Zlatko Pankov is a busy man. It is fitting, therefore, that his amazing glamping resort in Brač, Croatia, should be named after the industrious bee. Abeille Maison is set back from the popular beach on the island resort and comprises of eight incredible tented suites, each with their own private pool.

Zlatko Pankov

Each of these tents features a ‘bee’ name and can command as much as Euros 600 per night. The resort also boasts fine dining and mixology and is adults only. Despite its exquisite beauty, Zlatko himself believes that his next resort will be even finer. Ideally, he would have more space and privacy for his guests and plans for the perfect site are already far advanced.

As if this was not enough work for one man to manage, Zlatko designs and manufactures the tents he uses and will soon be making his tents and his dining and mixology concepts available for others to utilise in their own glamping resorts.

As for the industrious bee – Zlatko claims that he is drawn to it because the hive is a matriarchal society. “I admire women and the way they think,” he says. “I am convinced that if we had more female-led societies, such as Iceland, the world would be a more civilised place.” It was his daughter who chose the name for Abeille Maison – saying that the French would be an elegant touch.

In fact, Zlatko is Macedonian, as are many of his team and glamping is not his first career. For 30 years, he travelled the world as a stand designer and builder for exhibitions. His company excelled in creating fantastic structures in a matter of days in show halls around the world. Zlatko himself stayed in the finest hotels and was inspired by the best hospitality and surroundings. When COVID struck and events were cancelled, he concentrated on his other dream – glamping.

“Glamping saved my business these past couple of years,” he admits. “I had a team of 50 to support and they had the skills to build the site and I was able to play around with it. I am a perfectionist, and this was a wonderful project.” Incredibly, the main infrastructure of Abeille Maison was completed in just 55 days – it took his team 15 days build the tents – a background in meeting deadlines for events and creating high specification stands within budget proving to be extremely useful.

Zlatko chose Croatia for his site because he feels that it can command the kind of price per night for luxury camping those other countries such as Greece and Italy cannot. He also feels that although glamping is seemingly popular in Croatia – the quality of the offer is not often what he would consider to be high enough to warrant the name. “It’s popular in Croatia but it’s not real glamping. In 2020, the Croatian Government tried to put into law what glamping should be but it can still be everything from a farm stay to tents operated at a low level. I see it as a luxury offer – I classify luxury as everything you don’t really need and that costs a lot of money!” he adds with a laugh.

Therefore, he classifies Abeille Maison as Croatia’s first proper luxury glamping site. As for the individual swimming pools – this he sees as a necessity. “I previously had another site around five years ago with eight tents – two of the tents with a pool and the other six without a pool – the tents with pools were booked for 130 days a year, the other 6 were booked for just 40 days. I knew that it made business sense – most humans want to be by the water,” he says.

Zlatko first started to introduce his concept of glamping onto the market around 8 years ago, when he discovered that there was no product on the market that was suitable for his idea for the tented accommodation.

“We started to produce our own tents here in Macedonia, under the brand of My Glamping – we sought to upgrade the tents we saw in trade fairs and on the internet, using the top materials we could find. We wanted to make sure that they were very secure and stable, they can withstand winds of 185km and hour and 1.5m of snow – they are tents for summer and winter,” he says.

Zlatko has also developed a natural way to cool the tents, for which he is currently seeking a patent. “This is extremely important to beat the humidity we have in Croatia,” he says. The system involves layers of canvas which can trap the minutest breeze and effectively push the warm air out of the tent. It can lower temperatures by as much as 5 or 6 degrees and reduce humidity by 30 per cent – meaning that guests can reduce their usage of air conditioning, which is great for the environment.

The second challenge is finding the right location for the glamping sites. Zlatko devotes a lot of time and energy researching and communicating with the stakeholders, such as the local government and even Churches in the locations he favours for his sites. However, he has one fast rule – rent don’t buy. “At any time, someone can open a chicken farm or some other business next to yours and overnight it becomes impossible,” he says. “If you rent the land, you can simply move your tents and your business somewhere else. It is a much safer option and it’s good to keep things fresh and move anyway after seven or eight years.”

Beautiful Brač would appear to be the best possible location, with its Golden Horn beach and popular, quaint old town Bol. However, Zlatko is not completely satisfied. “In July and August the beach is very crowded, so we do get some noise. We have 5000m square for 8 tents but I would prefer around 12000m square,” he says. “But the position we occupy in the pine wood near the Golden Horn beach, is a very beautiful place for glamping, close enough to the famous beach and the highest mountain on the island, there are so many fantastic activities for our guests, biking, hiking, sightseeing and the sea,” he admits.

Whether it’s walking the secluded pathway to the old town or enjoying a floating breakfast in the pool before relaxing with a book on the sunbeds outside the tent, guests can do as little or as much as they like and enjoy as much privacy as they wish. Zlatko realises that it takes guests a while to unwind and find their adventurous spirit and this also is true of the cuisine he serves.

“People travel to experience wonderful food,” he says. “Our customers want something different; they want local food and ingredients cooked in a special way. Have you ever tried mussels cooked in porto with dry figs and garlic? People love it!”

Much of the food is sourced locally and the salad comes from the organic garden on site, but there are also other delicacies such as Japanese wagyu beef which is brought onto the island. The logistics are not so complex, “Where we are, it’s ex- Yugoslavia – there is a good infrastructure and we are only 50 minutes from Split – so bringing supplies and people here is no big drama,” says Zlatko.

Finding suitably trained staff is more of a challenge and leaving nothing to chance, Zlatko recruits many in Macedonia, where he trains them in his own restaurant. “We created the restaurant not only for training purposes but as employment for the staff out of season,” says Zlatko.

A restaurant, a tent manufacturing company, a trade fair company and two resorts to date – the first in Murter and the second on Brač and the third in progress in Istria – this would be more than enough for most people. But Zlatko is not most people. He has another project almost ready to go – on another Croatian island which is completely off-grid but he is feeling superstitious about it, as he is awaiting a final decision, so he won’t reveal too much. “I have the perfect project for this island,” he says wistfully, “I would just need to bring tents, water and of course, my bees!”